123-reg.co.uk

After the ‘success’ of the Pac-Man game that Google put on its home page – reports suggest surfers ‘wasted’ almost five million hours of work time playing the classic video game put on Google’s front page on 21 May to celebrate 30 years since the launch of Pac-Man in Japan – it appears Google are making a bigger investment into the gaming world.

TechCruch are reporting an investment by Google of between $100 million and $200 million in social gaming firm Zynga. The guys behind such social phenomena as Farmville and Mafia Wars have not confirmed Google’s involvement but they have been raising significant capital from interested investors in the past year and it appears ‘multiple sources’ are suggesting Google is one of these.

On the back of the PacMan success – still available via the Google site – and the fact that Google are looking to recruit a Product Manager Leader: Games in their California base, there may also be truth in the rumours that Google plan to launch their own Google Games site by the end of the year.

With social gaming hours increasing and offering a lucrative revenue stream there is certainly a business-case for Google to be moving into the arena.

Share and Enjoy

Comments

The new British coalition government is naturally trying to be everything to everybody and that is set to include the internet.

In her role as UK digital champion Lastminute.com founder, Martha Lane Fox has announced plans to get everybody of working age in Britain online by the end of the current Parliament – a population she claims is around 10 million Brits.

Fox’s Manifesto for a Networked Nation is to be official presented to Downing Street later today, but already the Prime Minister David Cameron has been quoting terms such as “digital inclusion” so it is a clear push by all the ensure those that are yet netted up get the chance to at least try.

With public sector cuts however hovvering over every government department it might need a push from the private sector to have the desired effect. What it will probably need is an innovative approach to get the large number of adults in the UK who stubbornly seem to shun and dis-respect the benefits of the internet. Fox’s website Race Online 2012, as well as asking for hardware and support donations, is looking for ideas on how to get people connected, so if you’ve always wanted to make internet history now might be your chance.

Share and Enjoy

Comments

Firefox 4 Beta 1 is out now to download and Mozilla is looking for  new users to become part of its testing programme.

The new Beta download out this week is exciting with Mozilla promising updated roll-outs “every two to three weeks” and they are keen to get as many users involved in the development process as early as possible. Whether that is just a brand marketing ploy or a real sense of community development we can’t be sure, but without big corporate investors to answer to, it is more likely the latter.

There are changes in look, feel, functions and performance over the existing Firefox browser and it is being built with HTML5 very much in mind. The approach appears to be to create a browser suitable for the present day but that will also be relevant in years to come. Giving feedback is easy too with a simple tool icon built into the browser.

Not all the planned features are yet installed in Beta 1 but with synchronisation across devices and enhanced privacy controls amongst the ‘coming soon’ items already in the pipleline it certainly looks set ot be the most powerful and comprehensive version of the browser yet.

Are you planning on testing the Firefox 4 Beta? Does Beta testing still have a relevance in the modern world?

Share and Enjoy

Comments

Social media services like Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and Bebo started out as places where people could communicate with each other. But as we flocked to join these sites in vast numbers, businesses began waking up to their marketing potential. Now you can’t move for being asked to follow companies on Twitter or become their fan on Facebook.

And what next? As companies look for new marketing angles and social networks try to make money from their vast audiences, we’re seeing more and more intrusive marketing on social media sites. Will there come a point when it all becomes too much? We’ve looked at three recent developments and tried to guess at what might happen from here.

Advertising on your own social networking pages

Over the last couple of years, a bunch of services have appeared which give users of social networking sites (people like you and me) the chance to make a few quid by sending adverts to their friends. You might insert the adverts into your Twitter updates or endorse a product on Facebook.

As this intelligent piece points out, the aim is to “varnish advertisements with the authenticity of being a personal recommendation from a friend.” But how would you feel if one of your mates was paid to mention products in conversation to you, or started adding paid-for adverts into their personal emails?

Some of the big social networks seem have realised that sponsored updates could damage their own credibility. Twitter, for instance, banned certain kinds of ads in May.

There are still plenty of companies out there offering you ways to make money from your status updates, so it’ll be interesting to see how these services do. My suspicion is that we’ll eventually generate blindness to sponsored updates, in the same way that some internet users instinctively ignore banner ads at the moment.

Sponsored trending topics on Twitter

Twitter’s trending topics list is an at-a-glance guide to the most popular things being talked about on the social network. Companies love to get their product, name or blog in there because it means they’re getting huge exposure on the social network. Read the rest of this entry »

Share and Enjoy

Comments

It’s a dangerous world out there and however net-savvy you are, there is always some worm, trojan, virus or nasty more savvy than you and ready to do harm to your PC.

The array of Anti-virus, PC-protections and safeguarding software options out there  almost out-number the potential threats and one with wide-ranging protections that updates and is easy to use is something of an endangered-species. Like the endangered-species it is named after the Panda Global Protection suite is a battle-hardy, beast of an option that can protect you from viruses, spam and even identity theft.

Now you can protect your PC against all of this with Global Protection 2010 via 123-reg. We think you will love the product so much we are even offering the first 90 days free. You can add Panda via your 123-reg Control Panel or with any new order, so it is easy to protect your computer against nasties.

Free for 90 days and protecting your machine with a firewall, virus-checker, speed optimizer and back-up protection. You’ve nothing to lose – apart from data if you don’t take up our Panda offer.

Share and Enjoy

Comments

So after the internet peak for England’s World Cup group game against Slovenia – ISP Easynet Connect  announced an increase of traffic by 226% on that day as people at work clambered to catch the action – we find the national team dumped out of the competition.

Yet, while the majority of the media may seem to be continuing reporting the doom and gloom of England’s failure in the competition, it appears the country’s single men have put it quickly behind them and turned to find excitement elsewhere. Online dating site Singles365.com reports a 187% week-on-week rise on registrations since England’s capitulation and it seems many didn’t mourn their team’s defeat for long: Single365.com’s traffic peak in registrations was just 32 minutes after the final whistle in Sunday’s defeat to Germany.

So if you’ve noticed your internet connection being a bit slower this week, it could well be your amorous colleagues signing up to dating services.

Share and Enjoy

Comments